Ghost Writer: The Mass Effect Job
by DoctorBatman
Summary: When a deranged fanboy endangers the universe for the sake of tail, it's up to a single world weary Editor to keep the situation under control. The poor Jack Elliot has no idea what he's gotten signed up for. Rated M for violence, crude humor, foul language, and Jack Elliot. Part one of a hopefully ongoing series. Forgive the probably terrible summary.


**Alright, so full disclosure: I do not, generally speaking, like fan fiction. I mean no offense to anybody in particular, especially not on this site when I say this. It's just it tends to be rougher around the edges, lower in overall quality, etc to most published works. This isn't to say that I hate the concept or have anything personally against it, it's just not generally my cup of tea.**

 **So, why am I here? Doing this? Actually quite simple. A friend of mine and I were having a joke argument about Fan Fiction, and how I preferred to channel my creative pursuits into entirely, or at least mostly, original content. Anyway, at some point or another, he used the line 'it's just harmless fun' in the conversation, and that lead to us jokingly asking 'what if it wasn't?'.**

 **The end result of this was a concept that, well, if you read the chapter below you'll have a decent understanding of. And because the universe is powered by hilarious irony; I the guy who dislikes fanfiction, came up with an original idea** ** _about_** **fanfiction, and am now technically writing fanfiction, about how the concept of fanfiction itself is terrible.**

 **On a site that is LITERALLY called 'Fanfiction: the webstie' because clearly this is the greatest place to write fic-ception.**

 **By the way, first chapter is somewhat rough by design: It's supposed to be something between a journal entry, an internal monologue, and a one-on-one personal conversation/explanation. I might revisit this format, but feel free to bring out your inner Grammar Nazi on every other post I make.**

My name is Jack Elliot, and I'm an Editor.

That may not mean what you think it means.

You see, the world works in mysterious ways. It turns out, creating the universe is so easy, you can do it in your sleep. I'm not joking, that's a thing that happens. Every time you dream of a different time and place, every time you write a story, every game and every movie... it's all real.

Kind of. This is where it gets complicated. You see, there's two different kinds of reality: Static reality, and dynamic reality. Here's the primary difference: Causality and Free Will. In a static reality, a person always turns left at a certain point, because they always do. The hero diffuses the bomb at the last possible second, because that's how it plays out.

The stupid hero never quite realizes that childhood friend of his is desperately in love with him.

Tell me, have you ever wanted to grab that guy and yell 'Kiss her you fool!'? If so, congratulations. You are the reason I hate my job.

This requires an explanation. Sorry, I'm not exactly a people person. I'm basically the universe's version of tech support. I've never had to explain the process to anybody, so I'm really just kinda hoping this makes sense.

Have you ever noticed a plot hole? Where you think "Hey, how did he get from his house to the police station that quickly?" Because in order for the story to move forward, the bomb needs to be diffused. If the heroic cop guy doesn't know about the bomb, he can't diffuse it. So the guy gets to the police in record time, Heroic Cop Guy diffuses the bomb, the day is saved, and poor childhood friend is still emotionally neglected. It's a plot hole, but it doesn't matter.

Unless you change the equation.

You see, what if you could tell Heroic Cop Guy about that girl that wants to ride him like a bucking bronco? You might just think that's a clever 'what if'.

Here's the problem: You have free will, and they don't. Why is this a problem? Because free will is *very contagious*. When you tell him this, you're not just scoring some dude a happy ending, you're introducing Free Will to a universe that never had it before. The process of a universe changing from static to dynamic is called 'actualization'. In a sense, you're making it real. Now, before you start squealing your stupid little head off about how cool this is, I'd like to remind you that the real world doesn't have plot holes.

Remember that bomb I mentioned? It just went off, because the series of events that led to the day being saved wasn't technically possible in the given time frame. Good job breaking it, Captain Romance.

The universe despises a vacuum. All holes have to be filled in, and the more that need filling, the more unstable this new universe is. Beyond a certain point, it just kinda buckles and collapses under the strain, stops existing entirely. Which is a big problem, because when it blows up, it's not a contained detonation. The world that tried to actualize it, it's going to suffer some blowback. If it gets bad enough, it falls too, and a portion of it's wreckage can hurt any other worlds it's connected to.

The obvious worse case scenario here is a Total Event Collapse. Someone screws the pooch so hard that all of the everything just kinda stops existing from the Domino Effect.

Which is why Editors exist. We run around doing the best we can to fill plot holes, or to just make them irrelevant. Remember that bomb? We add a few minutes onto it so the Cop can still save the day. Or we get the Cop the warning faster.

Or shit, sometimes we just cut out the middle man and diffuse it ourselves. Every Job requires a different touch.

What it doesn't require is some creeper planning to kidnap his Waifu for some less than consensual fun times. Which is the job I just got assigned. To stop some chick from a game I've never heard of from getting molested. Hang on Tali'Zorah, Your Knight in blah blah blah...

 **Alright, just so everybody knows, things might be a little slow on the writing side for me. The target I'm setting for myself is to update no later than a month after the last update. I figure setting the bar that low will make it easy to hit consistently, and if I happen to pop out extra updates along the way... well, all the better.**

 **Basically? If you see I've posted an update on May 12, June 12 is the absolute deadline for the new update. But it could hit as early as May 13 if I happen to have the time and motivation.**

 **Be sure to read, review, subscribe, and tell your friends. I think that's how you're supposed to end these.**


End file.
